Turner To Launch A Premium Sports Streaming Service

Turner plans to kick off a premium-sports streaming-video service -- adding to the list of other recent industry premium-video-platform announcements.

European football (what Americans call
soccer) will be one of its core launch sports. Turner also announced it had acquired exclusive multiplatform rights to UEFA Champions League and UEFA Europa League, beginning with 2018-2019
season.

Turner will present more than 340 matches per season. The new sports platform will debut in 2018.

An existing Turner sports site, Bleacher Report, will also stream
live games, sports clips and other content. The move will broaden the site's efforts to target millennial users. Live matches will be regularly televised across its linear channels: TBS, TNT and
truTV.

The new sports streaming service adds to other Turner OTT direct-to-consumer platforms, including FilmStruck and Boomerang.

Recently, Walt Disney said it was launching a ESPN
streaming service for 2018.

Both Amazon and Twitter have been streaming sports events. Earlier this year, Amazon announced it will stream 10 Thursday night NFL games for a reported
$50 million.

Twitter had a similar agreement with the NFL last season. Twitter continues to stream NHL games and lacrosse games and will stream e-sports events.